Corax: a brief Introduction
Corax: a brief IntroductionI think if I'd designed the corax race, I would have done it differently... but the concept which White Wolf came up with was pretty decent. Different enough from the werewolves to make it a unique roleplaying experience, and with enough surprises to keep even a corvid interested.
The Corax are Raven's children, gifted with the ability to shift back and forth between human (homid) and raven (corvid) forms, or even into an awkward half-man, half-bird (crinos) form. They can also fly, in both corvid and crinos forms. As birds, they're on the large side, even for a raven. As humans, they tend to be on the short side, and lightweight. All of them inherited Raven's curiosity, and consider it their duty to learn as much as they can about the world, and share those secrets with others.
As far as totems go, all corax have Raven as a totem - but there's something else tossed into the deal, too. Helios (the Sun) also acts as a totem to the corax.. The reasons behind this are complicated, and involve some trickery on raven's part (well, that's a surprise, hey?), but the fact of the matter is that Helios smiles on raven's children and grants them his blessings.
Because of Helios' involvement, the corax aren't bound to the moon's changing face, and don't have auspices the way the lupines do. All corax are considered ragabash, for the purposes of auspice.
Corax are also free of another one of the moon's complications: they are immunes to the effects of silver! In fact, most corax love silver, and make a habit of wearing it (if only because it drives the lupines nuts!). There is a trade-off, though... corax take aggravated damage from gold, instead. It affects them the same way as silver affects the garou.
As Raven's children, the corax have a sacred duty... a sort of corvid 'last rites'.. which they perform on the dead. They eat the eyes of the fallen. Yes -that's right - corax eat dead things, and they do go for the eyes, first. The eyes are the juciest part, the easiest to get at, and the eyes are a portal to the mind. You see, the eyes aren't just another tasty snack - they're a reminder that the body was once a living creature, complete with feelings, ambitions, and personality... you don't just toss back a few calories when you drink an eye... you can actually learn things about the one who died.
A corax, in corvid form, can 'drink' the eye of any fresh corpse, be it man, raven, wolf, or another animal entirely. Permission is needed from the corpse before you do this, though, and its difficult to explain how exactly you get that permission, but you ask the corpse, and you just sorta know whether you're allowed to drink or not.
Then you have to choose which eye to drink from. The right will show you the good in the death, and the left will show you the bad. You can pick either, but drinking from too many left eyes or right eyes in row can get unpleasant. And no, you can't drink both eyes.
What do you see when you drink an eye? It depends on the individual corax, the feelings of the corpse, the way it died, and the generosity of the Storyteller. Most commonly, though, you can see the dead person's last sight, feel what they were feeling, and remember bits of what they were thinking. These memories become your nourishment as much as the victim's flesh does. A corax doesn't survive on roadkill alone, after all.
This 'drinking of eyes' is unique to the corax race. All corax do it, and it seems to be an instinctive thing, taking all of a few minutes to learn fully. Its part of what it means to be Raven's children. Ravens are carrion birds, after all, and death is every much a part of life as living is. You have to learn to see the good and the bad in death, enjoy the sorrow and the laughter in life, and share your knowledge and understanding with the rest of Gaia's creatures.
Corax are unique among the changing breeds in other ways, too: they don't reproduce through breeding alone, as the lupines do, but through the use of a rite. The Rite of the Fetish Egg is performed over a human baby or a raven's egg, binding the psychic energies of the corax parent to the young one, which will later become a fully fledged (pardon the pun) corax.
If the corax parent is a corvid, the rite must be performed on a human child. If the parent is homid, it must be done with an egg. This means that the 'breed' keeps alternating from generation to generation, between homid and corvid. The numbers of homid and corvid among the corax are kept pretty even this way.
The rite won't work with the child (or egg) of two corax parents, though. Corax metis are a non-issue. That's a good thing, if you thing about it. It's bad enough when some poor garou gives birth to a metis werewolf... but can you imagine trying to hatch a half-egg, half baby? Or give birth to a screeching mass of feathers and talons, with a very sharp beak?
The Rite of the Fetish Egg isn't the only cool corax rite. Others include Rite of the Sun's Bright Ray (a level two rite which creates a 20'x20' area of bright sunlight, lasting for an hour or more. Can all you leeches out there say 'Sunburn'?), Rite of Becoming (a level two rite which lets a corax fly into the deep umbra), Rite of the Battle Blessing (level four, cast by the Morrigan to help the garou defeat whole armies of opponents), and Rite of Memory Theft (a level four punishment rite used to rob an errant corax of his entire memory).
Of course, the corax gifts are even cooler. And since there's no breed/auspice/tribe rubbish to worry about, there aren't any restrictions about who can learn what. Not to mention that as corax get up in rank, they often learn garou gifts as well, and sometimes even the rites of other bete!
Some of the cooler corax gifts include:
The ranking system is similar to that of the garou. There are five ranks, and a corax must earn renown to advance from once rank to another. There aren't any challenges or rites of passage, though... the corax simply acknowledge the new rank ofthe deserving, and begin to accord them the priviledges which come with that rank.
A corax who has just had his first change is an Oviculum. The rank equivalent to the garou 'fostern' is Neocornix. Next is Ales, followed by Volucris. The corax 'elders' are called Corvus (singluar, or Corvi, in the plural).
And speaking of priviledges of rank, one of them is sitting higher in the tree at a corax moot. Yep - corax have their own moots, just like the wolf-boys do, except corax hold their moots in trees, in the daytime, and every one comes in crovid form. Why is it a priviledge to sit higher in the tree at a moot? ...Think about it.
Corax moots are infrequent, but when they're called, a lot of talking gets done (particularly because they aren't as formal and stuffy as garou moots). First, there's an invocation to Helios, and then a prayer to Raven. There's the basic touching base with eachother, seeing who showed and who didn't (any corax who can come, will. Those who don't...well, there's usually a brief search party, and often a howl... er, caw... for the deceased). New corax are introduced to the rest. Stories are told, business is dealt with, and plans are made. Renown is dished out as appropriate while all that is going on... no formal procedure... just shouting and gossiping, really. The storytelling and gossiping go on till the moot ends, which is at sundown. Just before sundown, the corax take to the air and fly over the town, spiralling towards a central point (which they reach as the sun sets) and they all share what they've seen... usually over a pint of beer at a nearby tavern.
Which brings us to yet another corax trait: Talking. Corax are talkative. You know - the kind who just can't stop once they've gotten onto a good story... except that they have a hard time getting to the point of the story, sometimes, because they keep getting distracted by little details, or related topics, or just go off on a complete tanget, babbling about any matter of interest, especially secrets - good secrets are the hardest ones to keep, you see, and the better the secret the tougher it is to keep it (not that any corax would keep a secret from another corax of course) but its the sort of thing which can get you into trouble around the less pleasant creatures out there, or even the pleasant ones who just don't want certain secrets told, or who don't want to listen to you babbling on and on and on and on....
Ah... yeah. Its great to be a corax!